Borderlands 4's Creative Director Classes, And Familiar Faces Returning For More
Thanks to 2K Australia, I had the fantastic opportunity to chat with Grant Kao, the Associate Creative Director on Borderlands 4. He shared a range of fascinating insights into the game’s design, it’s World Events, the loot grind, and the heroes and antagonists found within Kairos.
Today, we talk about the changes to other established Borderlands 4 systems and how they’re changing to better the playing experience.
Part 1 of our interview can be found here
Paul: Throughout this conversation, we’ve spoken a lot about kind of prior elements from previous games and how they interact with some of these new pillars of the Borderlands 4 experience, leaning into some of the writing and some of the characters and some of the faces that we’ve known and loved for many years now. We know that there is a range of returning faces, and I think about the likes of Moxie and Zane, Claptrap, Amara, and many others that have already been discussed so far. We’ve then obviously got a new cast of Vault Hunters, and we’ve got new villains too.
How does the team strike a balance between old and new when it comes to featured characters, considering Borderlands is renowned for the comedic elements introduced in the game? How do you strike a balance between referencing the past, embracing the present, pop-culture references, and how they get used as well? What does that look like to build out? Because obviously it’s been such a huge component of the franchise up to this point.
Grant: Yeah, I would say it’s a very long discussion that takes years. And I don’t say that in the sense of like the trope-ish game development verbiage. I mean, the sense that, we know that we have a history with strong protagonists in characters like Maya, Lilith, and all the previous Sirens. And we know that we have a strong lineage of very tough and prominent antagonists. When we talked about the development of Borderlands 4, and I’m not gonna spoil anything. So, but I will say that like, we looked at what went right in BL2 and 3 and what went wrong in BL2 and 3, and tried to solve those questions and overcome those obstacles in BL4 by focussing on what we do best.
And we know what we do best. We do best by telling stories around characters. And then that’s where we started. And then, how does our game and the direction of the game and the designs that we want to use and to help our designers build cool content, how does that translate into the story that we’re trying to tell wrapped around those characters? And that just kind of goes back and forth between narrative team, design direction, and designers themselves, because we wanna empower the designers themselves.
And I’ll give you an example.
Every Borderlands, we always introduce new manufacturers for the weapons, for the gear. And that conversation starts at the very beginning of like, hey, which manufacturers are coming back and which manufacturers are introducing? And it’d be very easy to say like, oh yeah, everything is coming back because we know how to make those weapons. But we intentionally say like, hey, what exists on Kairos? What fell into Kairos when we crashed there? So we try to wrap everything in context with the narrative team, but also make sure that, hey, a player needs to hold a sniper rifle. So a sniper rifle has to be a part of the game. And what manufacturers would be great for this in that sense? So everything is cohesively tied together. And it really starts with, the core fundamentals of strong characters, building out the world, and then the world leads to systems and designs that help empower the designers to tell small stories and the big story at large.
Paul: A couple of lighter ones as we end our time together.
We’ve obviously got a new cast of Vault Hunters, and I’m sure you’ve got a little bit of love for all of them. But for you personally, purely personally, do you have a particular favourite child? One that you feel like you just keep gravitating towards, or one that maybe as a recommendation for the players that are listening into this, who should you really strongly consider, in your opinion?
Grant: So it has changed over time. I’ve been on this project for a long time. I would say at the start, I was all in on Rafa. Rafa was my dude, I’m a big melee fan, and he gave me cool futuristic techno swords, I’m sold. But as I played the game more and more, I find myself gravitating to Harlowe, because Harlowe is, well, she’s just badass. She’s our resident Maliwan lineage character, Vault Hunter, and she’s got tech and gadgetry, and she uses science and stuff to try to solve things and overcome obstacles. And her skills are so cool. And I don’t think we have revealed her whole things officially.
You’ve seen it in trailers and everything, but her skills are awesome. So Harlowe is my personal favourite. She works well with other Vault Hunters too. And I love playing with co-op. And so I, and so my big character was Harlowe, because she works so well with other characters.
Paul: And that might help even inform my own decision-making when it comes to the final release. But I guess the last question I’ve got, and again, just kind of continuing the theme of kind of lighter, fun ones at the end here. You’ve obviously worked on all of the games in the, so many games in the Borderlands franchise up to this particular point in time; and so if tomorrow you, God help us all, woke up in the world of Borderlands, what class would you want to be?
Grant: What class? [Cue big pause] I think the class that I would love to be would probably be, you know, the easy answer would say it’s Siren, because Sirens are so powerful. But I really like Zero back in from Borderlands 2, you know, being able to go, I mean, and something said Flak, because like, I’m a big like stealth player and for Zero and Flak to kind of go stealth and then kind of reappear and do massive amounts of damage. That’s my jam. You know, and now that I think about it, Flak, because Flak also has a pet. So like, so, you know, like it’s too hard to pick, but like my first thought is to just go like, yeah, if I’m not a Siren, then I would want to be a stealth character because one, you know, run away from craziness, but two, get the surprise on people too. So yeah, either Zero or Flak.
Borderlands 4 will be available on PS5, Xbox Series, and PC on September 12, 2025, and to Nintendo Switch 2 on October 3, 2025.
Thank you very much to 2K, Gearbox Software, and of course Grant himself for providing this time and insight into one of the holiday season’s most anticipated titles
